Gavin's Spring Break: surfing, golfing, fishing, making friends. WIth gym buds, an Easter bunny, and Taino guys.

 

Last year Gavin Munn spent spring break in Puerto Rico.  He posted some pics to his Instagram, and I added a few of my own.

 Playa Jobos

That's not a real pelican

Golfing on Playa Guajataca.

Gym Bud

Taino festival

About 80,000 people in Puerto Rico identify as descendants of the Taino.  There are cultural festivals across the Caribbean.

More Gavin after the break

Searching for Brandon Johnston through actors, fitness instructors, Elves, twins, various naked guys, and the mayor of Chicago

 

I've been going through the posts from when this site was specific to The Righteous Gemstones, trying to make them appeal to a general audience. I did it with Dylan B., and I couldn't even use his last name.  But Brandon Johnston turned out to be a problem: 

1. The original post called him  "Johnson"

2. It records his roles rather than titles of his projects: Elf Photo Clerk,  Valet, College Student 2, Audience Member, Golf Caddie Twin, and Genius Clone. 

A search for "Brandon Johnson" on the IMDB yielded this guy, known for Ingrid Goes West and Rick and Morty.  He's middle-aged and black.  My Brandon is young and white.

Although I wouldn't mind researching this Brandon next.

Googling revealed Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago.  Probably not the same guy.

"Brandon Johnston"?  Nothing.

Searching on Facebook yielded 16,000 Brandon Johnsons/ Johnstons, including this fitness coach from Ogden Utah.  

How about "Brandon Johnson/Johnston" and "nude"?  Warning: the first hit is a big-breasted naked lady. 

The second is Bryce Johnston, who must be famous for something, since "Naked Celebrity" websites gushed over a video of him skinny-dipping, showing his butt and a very blurry dick.

But when I googled "Bryce Johnston," all I found was the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles and the heavily tattooed Father Midnight.

The original post also mentions that Brandon Johnson/Johnston is interested in gay Hollywood History. 
"His Instagram videos tell the stories of many LGBTQ pioneers in the industry, such as Dorthy Arzner, William Haines, and James Whale."

More Brandon, probably, after the break

Balkan Beefcake: Twelve bulging Bosnians, hung Herzegovians, and Croatian cocksmen

ILGA Europe ranks all 49 European countries on LGBT equality, and the Balkan states do surprisingly well: Montenegro scores 61%, higher than the Netherlands, and Croatia  51%, higher than Switzerland. Bosnia and Herzegovina 39.5%, and Serbia 35%, score higher than Italy.   

Of course, legal equality does not necessarily translate into gay-friendliness for the traveler. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has only one gay-specific bar.  Guys meet through private parties and the internet.

Sex god from Sarajevo

Mostar, two hours by train south of Sarajevo, near the Adriatic Sea, is famous for its old Turkish quarter, as well as the Museum of War and Genocide Victims.  Ok...well, there are three gay-friendly bars.

Nijvice, Croatia, a resort town near the Italian border.  But you have to go through Slovenia to get there, so it takes about three hours.

More Balkan beefcake after the break

"It's Always Sunny," Episode 7.10: Mac gets fat, Charlie refuses sex, and Michael O'Hearn flexes. With bonus Sunny butts

Looking for Michael O'Hearn muscle, I found an appearance in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Episode 7.10 (2011).  It's been on for like a century, so you've probably seen it: four sociopathic pals and their anti-father figure run a sleazy, always-deserted bar in Philadelphia, where they argue, fight, scheme against each other, and work together on elaborate money-making scams

Dennis (Glen Howerton, right), the bartender, prides himself on his attractiveness. .

His sister Dee (Kaitlyn Olson), the bar's waitress, fancies herself an actress.

Mac (Rob McElhenney, left), the bouncer, is obsessed with muscles, and rather homophobic.  He gets a lot of "is he or isn't he?" jokes, until he finally comes out, then goes back in, and comes out again.

Frank (Danny DeVito, the moon), Dennis and Dee's rich con-artist sort-of-father, bankrolls the schemes.

He and Charlie (Charlie Day, center), the bar's janitor, live together, share a bed, and get a lot of "are they or aren't they?" jokes, but it's also hinted that Frank is Charlie's biological father, not his boyfriend.

None of the cast is homophobic in real life. In 2018, they all appeared on a Paddy's Pub float at the LA Pride Parade, giving Mac a chance to show off his new ripped bod.

Scene 1: Mac is in a Catholic confession booth (where you confess your sins to the priest, who gives you a penance to perform).  His confession: he's fat. Not a sin, dude.

Scene 2: Next Mac asks the priest to have God smite his enemies...um, friends...well, friends who want to destroy him.  Not what confession is for, dude. He explains: they became wildly successful, which made them monsters (um...they've been monsters since Season 1), which made them want Mac to be fat. Confused?

Flashback:  Frank, the anti-father, returns from a trip to sell illegal fireworks in North Carolina to find the bar packed.  What happened?  Mac thinks that they just "tipped": if you make the right decisions long enough, eventually things tip in your favor.  Charlie thinks it's his cleaning, Dee her jokes, Dennis his hotness.  They don't know which it is, so they have to continue doing everything.

Scene 3: In bed that night, Charlie just wants to go to sleep so he can work tomorrow, but Frank wants to blow up a lamb with his remaining fireworks.  They argue until Charlie makes a barrier between them, so they can't have sex, which hurts Frank's feelings.  Mac calls and invites them to go on a rager, but they can't because they're fighting.

Left: Frank, Danny DeVito.

Scene 4: The next day, Dennis won't come out of the bathroom, so Charlie has to bartend, which he's not qualified for. Meanwhile, Dee tries to be funny, ignoring customers' orders to tell lame half-jokes and berating them when they don't laugh, and Mac comes late in after a rager involving three bottles of champaign and a stray dog. Everything is in chaos. 

They all go into the bathroom to see what's wrong with Dennis: he found a couple of gray hairs and tried to eradicate them, ending with a terrible haircut.  He's afraid to be seen in public. 

Scene 5: After bartending all night, Charlie is exhausted; plus he hasn't had time to clean. Frank has come up with a new prank: four stop signs at an intersection, so no one can move, har har. Charlie points out that he built a four-way stop, actually making the neighborhood safer. "Ok, then, why don't we go around and hit people with sticks?"  Charlie doesn't want to do that, either.  Not the best ideas for Date Night, buddy.

Scene 6: Mac is planning places to avoid when he sails around the world with the profits from their new successful bar.  He'll avoid Africa -- too poor, the Middle East -- too hot, and well, everywhere.  Meanwhile, Dennis applied a chemical peel to his face, and now looks disfigured, so he can't be the attractive bartender anymore.

Left: Dennis, Glenn Howerton

Dee suggests hiring  replacements, or avatars, to do all the dirty work, so they can concentrate on being attractive, funny, and successful.  Of course the avatars have to look like the gang.

More sunny after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.3: Baby Billy sings forever, Kelvin can't say the word, BJ poses nude, and I'm depressed

Previous: Episode 3.2: Kelvin's butt buddies, gay Percy, two toxic families, and some military cocks

In Episode 3, we meet Uncle Baby Billy, the Montgomery Boys join the family, and the marital problems are resolved.

Title: "For Their Nakedness is Your Own Nakedness." From Leviticus 18:10, ESV: "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness." This is a prohibition of incest, specifically having sex with your grandchild. Where, in this episode, does anyone mention incest?  A review in the AV Club intreprets it as: the vulnerability of one member of the family is everyone's responsibility. "We're all in this together."

The Greek Chorus: The white-haired, grinning Baby Billy, dressed like a clam, sings"There will Come a Payday," while walking through the Gemstone resort, Zion's Landing.  He sings incessantly in a swimming pool area with absolutely no beefcake, while viewers grate their teeth and snarl "Get the f*k on with it."  Yes, we know he's a Greek Chorus, singing about the "payday" coming to the Gemstones.  We don't need ten minutes of it, in a show that is already squeezing in too many plotlines.

Finally, long after we put on the mute,  Baby Billy returns to his penthouse, where his very pregnant wife Tiffany and their three-year old son Lionel are watching the old game show Family Feud.  The Baby Billy/Tiffany plotline this season will be about trying to get the Gemstones to invest in a Christian-based Family Feud show, Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers.

Timeline problem: Tiffany had her first baby in the last episode of Season 2.  Now he's at least three years old.  But three years have not passed in the Gemstone universe.  

.

"We don't like you":  The Montgomery Boys (Robert Oberst, top photo, Lukas Haas) in bathrobes in Eli's house, eating breakfast, discussing Peter's militia with Eli, May-May, and the siblings:

 Peter thinks that his sons and Gemstones tipped off the feds, so now he's gunning for all of them.  May-May wants the boys to come home with her, but they refuse: "We'd rather be homeless bums living under a bridge."  Or living in a mansion with a staff of 17?  

Afterwards, the siblings go down to the Aimee-Leigh memorial, discuss how much they hate their cousins, and give them the finger as they peer through an upstairs window.  Eli insists that they have a Cousin's Night and try to get along.  

The Redeemer: Amber brings a copy of her marital-problem System to BJ, who claims to be unaware of any problems between him and Judy.  Does everyone in the church know that Judy has been withholding sex? Or did Jesse tell Amber about the affair?

Meanwhile, Jesse and his youngest son Abraham head for the Gemstone garage to unwrap The Redeemer, the monster truck he used at the 2000 County Fair.  The Montgomery Boys, who happened to be passing by, are in awe, and ask if they can drive it. Nope. "We ain't cool cousins, and we never will be again."  

A Complete Lack of Knowing How to Fit into the World: Kelvin and the teens are making anti-smut posters in the parking garage outside the Salvation Center Stage, for some reason, when Keefe drives up in the Smut Busters van.  Kelvin flitters over, laying on the femme stereotypes, and says "Hey, Bud."  Keefe calls him "Bro."  This must be facade language: they are pretending to be buddies and co-pastors in front of the kids.

Keefe drove to an adult store and bought out their inventory of "bullets and butt buzzers," vibrators that are inserted into the butt.  I thought he was an anal top.  Maybe he was thinking of what Kelvin likes. 

Again, almost everything we see is marketed to gay men. Notice the Pipedream Extreme: "Fuck my ass while you stroke my cock!"  One gigantic dildo is mounted on the inside of the van door.  

"You've been having all the fun lately!" Kelvin exclaims, wishing that he could have been there to help pick out butt buzzers.  He does his usual titty-tweak display of affection, then reveals that his Daddy is forcing him to go to Cousins' Night with the Montgomerys.  They have "a complete lack of knowing how to fit into the world around them."  

Sounds exactly like Keefe!  He tries to guilt his way into an invitation.  

Wouldn't he be invited automatically?  He was admitted to the family as Kelvin's partner back in Season 2.  But maybe, to stay closeted, Kelvin only brings him to events where a lot of people are invited, like the dinners at Jason's Steakhouse and the Zion's Landing ground-breaking.  This is a family-only event, and not even the entire family.  It's limited to Montgomery cousins by blood or marriage.  If Kelvin brings Keefe, no one will be able to pretend that they are just coworkers or platonic pals. 

Keefe's bribes are: his special sausage dip and his "flames and swords."  The dip is served with crackers on a phallic dish.  Everything these guys do involves dicks. It is amazing that some fans, actually quite a lot, were still arguing that Kelvin and Keefe were straight after this episode. 

Let's look more closely at the "flames and swords."   Kelvin knows exactly what Keefe is talking about: he doesn't have to say "Remember that fire dance I performed that one time?"  He must perform it regularly, but you wouldn't do it for just one person, and the family has never seen it.  We can conclude that the guys are involved in the local gay community, attending gay events with sausage dip and Keefe's "flames and swords" 

Sadness and BJ's dick after the break

Spring break in Iceland: A hookup with a Nordic god

Augustana, Junior Year

Augustana was a small college, so there weren't many choices for Modern Language Majors: Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Latin, Greek, and occasionally Russian. We had to "become fluent" in two languages and "competent" in a third, so I chose Spanish and French, which I studied in high school, and German, because I spent the fall quarter of my sophomore year in Regensburg. 

We also had to participate in at least one language club, but the Spanish, French, and German clubs were kind of boring, with bake sales, foreign-language films, and field trips to the Goethe Institut or the Alliance Française in Chicago.

Everybody joined the Scandinavian Club -- they had an endowment from a wealthy alumnus, and paid most of the way for members to go on annual field trips to Scandinavia!  A different country every year, alternating between Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

In my junior year, it was Iceland.  I would have preferred Norway, but I wasn't about to turn down ten days in the land of the Old Norse sagas and Nordic hunks.

There were 12 of us, eight boys and four girls, plus two chaperones. We stayed in a youth hostel, four to a room, but everyone got a single bed, so there wasn't any late-night fondling, just a couple of less-than-spectacular sausage sightings.

No one came out willingly in the 1970s, so if any of the other guys were gay, they didn't let on.

Iceland was interesting, but not quite interesting enough for six days.  After you see the National Museum and the  Árbæjarsafn, an open-air museum of Icelandic history, there's nothing but glaciers, geysers, rocks, and scraggly mountains.  I've never found natural wonders as interesting as museums.

We never made it to Akureyri, famous for its annual strongman contest.

One day we took a bus to Hveragerði, about 45 minutes from Reykjavik, to visit Reykjadalur, "Steam Valley,"  an unearthly-looking region of volcanic boulders, spurts of steam, rocks, waterfalls, pools of water, and hot springs with wooden footpaths around.

Our guide told us that some intrepid souls jumped into the hot springs, but you had to be careful -- in some of them, the temperature got up to 80 degrees (175 fahrenheit), and would scald you.

None of us was brave enough.  Besides, it was cloudy and damp, with a cold wind blowing -- who wanted to strip?

When it came time to get back on the bus, we discovered that Erik was missing!

He was a junior Scandinavian Studies major, short, slim, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a round handsome face.  We had known each other since high school, but we didn't interact much: he was a fratboy, several levels above me on the social scale.

We went up and down the paths, calling his name.  No answer.

He couldn't have fallen into a crevice.  It was all open -- we would see him.

Could he have wandered off the path, into the wilderness of volcanic rocks?

We searched for 45 minutes.  Then, just as our chaperone suggested we drive back to town and stop at the police station, Erik appeared -- on a path we had just searched!

Seeing our anxious and angry faces, he said "What?  Chill out -- I was just looking at something.  We're only in Iceland once, right?"

He didn't believe that he had been gone over 45 minutes: "I guess I lost track of time.  Sorry."

More after the break

Brock Cock, Part 1: Brock O'Hurn's boyfriends and bulges, pigs and penises, cowboys and....well, you get the idea

 

Everybody needs a little Brock O'Hurn now and then.  At least his 1.7 million instagram followers think so.  Brock has played any number of muscle-hunks, including Hulk Hogan, Thor, Tarzan, a "swole Mel Brooks," and guys named Horse and Ragnar Stormbringer.  

He may be most famous as  Torsten, the "gentle giant" of the God Squad, a homoerotic muscle commune, in Season 2 of The Righteous Gemstones.  Presumably Adam Devine isn't in character here, or he'd be much more interested in the muscles pressing against him.

Here Brock is a shirtless cowboy in the video Wild West Showdown.  

Brock is a co-creator and model for Kane Comic Universe about an immortal muscleman who travels through time, fighting demons, evil gods, madmen, and so on. Warning: Issue #2 features women's boobs rather than Brock pecs.

Taking his pet pigs to the beach.  He also has dogs and cats.

More Brock Cock after the break

Jason Schwartzman: Lots of quirky guys winning the Girl of Their Dreams, with two gay/bi roles and one penis

Jason Schwartzman broke into film with Rushmore, 1998, which I didn't see: the plot synopsis sounded decidedly creepy, not to mention obsessively heterosexist.  A 15 year old boy tries to get with one of high school teachers, but she refuses to sexually assault him, so he fixes her up with his older buddy and finds an age-appropriate girlfriend.  Shudder.

He played a few more disaffected, deviant, and dangerous teenagers, in  Freaks and Geeks, Slackers, and Spun, then moved on to some well-received independents, such as I Heart Huckabees and The Grand Budapest Hotel

Looking through the list on the IMDB, I realize that out of Jason's 87 movies and tv shows, I've seen four: 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 2010:  An adaption of the graphic novel, with Scott (Michael Cera, who I watched to see) trying to win the Girl of His Dreams by clobbering her evil exes.  One is a girl; plus Scott has a gay roommate, played by Kieran Culkin. Jason plays one of the exes, Gideon G-Man Graves.

Wet Hot American Summer, 10 Years Later, 2017, reunites the gang from the movie and add some new characters, such as Deegs, "the new Andy" (Skyler Gisondo, who I watched to see). Jason plays Greg, the head boys' counselor at the summer camp.

In The Righteous Gemstones Season 2, Jason plays Thaniel, a sleazy journalist digging up dirt about "sexual impropriety" among clergy.  He is especially interested in taking down Eli Gemstone, the most famous televangelist and mega-church pastor in the world. Eli's children, hoping to talk him into backing off, go to his cabin, and find him shot to death!  "Who killed Thaniel?" is one of the main mysteries of the season.

Jason plays a gay guy in Asteroid City, 2023: Augie Steenbeck, a World War II photojournalist who stars in the play based on the movie we're watching, and dates the playwright, I think. It's all very confusing, and not really worth it: the two are on stage for only about 30 seconds, and vanish after a single, so-distant-that-you-can-barely-see it kiss.

More Jason after the break

Brad Hallowell: A decade of dicks. The rest is silence.

 As Janet Weiss said in Rocky Horror, "I don't like men with too many muscles." Greek gods are nice to look at, and fun to do stuff with, but cuddling with a marble slab afterwards?   So when I stumbled onto a nude photo of Brad Hallowell while  researching something else, I thought "Nearly a perfect body.  Why haven't I heard of this guy before?" 

Maybe because he's nearly anonymous.  No Instagram, X, Facebook, or TikTok page, an IMDB biography with just his home town and date of birth -- Waterville, Maine, February 13, 1981.  Seven movies listed on IMDB, all between 2006 and 2016.  Most directed by Todd Verow, most featuring frontal nudity.  A decade of dicks, and then silence.

Vacationland, 2006: A high school senior ditches his girlfriend for a same-sex romance. Brad is 25 years old.

Hooks to the Left, 2006. An "experimental" film, shot with a cell phone camera, about the adventures of a hustler named Nail.

Between Something and Nothing, 2008.  An art student gets a girlfriend and pursues a hustler.

The rest of the decade after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.2: Kelvin's butt buddies, gay Percy, two toxic families, and some military dicks

Previous: Episode 3.1, Continued: Kelvin withholds sex, Judy cheats and Jesse fights, with some random butts

Episode 3.2 introduces Eli's estranged brother-in-law Peter Montgomery, his sons, and a disturbing super-macho mirror of Kelvin's God Squad.

Title: "But Esau Ran to Meet Him," from Genesis 33.4.  Jacob has tricked his father Isaac into giving him the inheritance.  Esau is furious and vows to kill him, so he flees.  When he returns after 20 years, Esau behaves as if he is happy to see him, but....

Stephen's abusive wife:  Stephen, who was fired as Judy's guitarist after her brothers discovered their affair, is trying to tell his wife Kristy that he was "laid off," not fired.  She doesn't buy it.  It's a highly abusive relationship: she calls him "an unemployed, cokehead piece of shit who sulks all day."  He screams "Fuck you!", and she hits him with a glass blender.  Shattered glass all over his face and head, in front of the kids!  Whoa, scary.  The Gemstones and their partners argue, but they never use abusive language or physical violence.  Except for the time that Amber shot Jesse in the butt. 

Later, Judy meets Stephen at Spanky's Cafe, a real restaurant in North Charleston, and offers him $10,000 to leave her alone: "I don't want to see you no' mo'."  But he still wants her.  Judy points out that he's married, but it doesn't matter: "I'd leave my family in a second if I could have you.  I'd murder them." Say what?  This guy is a psycho. Of course, he should leave his abusive wife, but murder her...and the kids?

Kelvin's Butt Buddies:  Jesse and Amber's adult son Gideon, who moved to California to become a stuntman, is back, lying on the veranda in a bathrobe, smoking a cigarette, holding a box of Lucky Charms cereal, and sulking.  The background song by Buddy Knox tells us: "I think I'm going to kill myself."  He injured his neck, and may never do stunt work, tumbling, or martial arts again.  At least he's displaying a nice chest.

Background alert: Skyler Gisondo injured his neck in real life in 2022, when his hair stylist gave him a "little neck massage."  They wrote his injury into the script.

In a much, much nicer parallel to the Stephen-Kristy confrontation, Gideon's parents order him to stop feeling sorry for himself, get off his butt, and go to work for the church.  But he doesn't want to preach.  Ok, so he can become Eli's driver. Remember that the long-term driver, Walker, was fired.

We cut to Gideon on his first assignment, driving Eli and the siblings to see if May-May's kids are ok.  They are living with her estranged husband, Peter Montgomery, and his militia, the Brotherhood of Tomorrow's Fires: they expect end of civilization, like Eli's Y2K scare back in 1999.   Eli calles them preppers: "They want to make sure they don't run out of toilet paper."

Usually Evangelicals believe in the Rapture, when Jesus zaps everyone who is saved to Heaven, leaving the unsaved to suffer through seven years of the dystopian Tribulation before being sent to hell.  To this day, I will not let anyone stamp my hand for re-entry into an event, because  the Mark of the Beast was drummed into my head.  But Eli and Peter apparently have a different belief system.

On the way to the compound, at the defunct Boy Scout Camp Wooden Feather, the siblings discuss their cousins, Karl and Chuck.  Kelvin says that he always found them "kind of dumb and strange."  But you haven't seen them since 2000, when you were ten or eleven.  How much do you remember?

Judy: "That's why I'm surprised you weren't butt buddies with them."  

He gets annoyed, not because she alludes to him being gay but because she implied that he's also "dumb and strange," and therefore perfect for the Montgomerys.

Not the God Squad:  Bizarre signs like "Now we will see" greet the family, along with multiple armed guards.  They pass Jacob (Stephen Louis Grush) cutting up a deer.  Kelvin smiles at him -- think he's hot, buddy?.  Then a military-style obstacle course;  guys practicing martial arts; a guy taking a shower outdoors (no beefcake); and finally the mess hall, where about thirty militia men are having lunch.

Wait -- no women and children?  The actual far-right militia movement has many female participants, but this is a male-only space, like Kelvin's God Squad in Season 2, but with scruffy guys in military fatigues instead of flexing musclemen.  It is dedicated to phileo instead of eros, buddy-bonding instead of homoerotic desire. An article on Doomsday Preppers notes that these male-only groups "cultivate a dangerous vision of apocalyptic manhood that consummates a fantasy of national virility in the demise of feminine society."  Women are weak and fragile, their civilization doomed. Only the "manly love of comrades" can survive the Apocalypse. 

May-May's son Chuck ushers Eli and the siblings in. They are greeted by Cousin Karl (Robert Oberst), who is delighted to see them; and Uncle Peter (Steve Zahn, below), who is not.  It's time for church, so get out!  No, the siblings offer to help lead the service: Jesse will preach, Judy will sing, and Kelvin will  perform some "feats of strength" for the kids -- the only time he references his muscles during the season.  No kids around, but maybe the militia guys would like to see some masculine beauty.   

Uncle Peter rejects the siblings' offer.  They are "phony fakers," entertainers, interested in making money rather than saving souls. 

More military guys after the break

Robert Oberst and the World's Strongest Men. Yes, some of them are naked

Robert Oberst, whose motto is "Strong and Pretty," grew up in Aptos, California, graduated from Western Oregon University in 2008 with a degree in history.  He moved to San Francisco, and like most history majors, found work as a bouncer in gay bars.  

But soon he discovered that being huge was good for more than attracting guys: he began competing on the strongman circuit, and racking up awards:

First place, San Francisco Fit Exp, 2012.

Third place, America's Strongest Man, 2012. Second place, 2013 and 2014

Third place, All-Amerca Strong Man Challenge, 2013.

And it goes on like that.  Meanwhile, he sold "Strong and Pretty" products and appeared as himself in two tv series dedicated to the strongest men in the world.

In 2022, after placing in nearly 20 competitions, Robert retired from strength competitions, just in time to break into an acting career.  He stars in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones as Chuck Montgomery, one of the backwoods cousins of the mega-rich Judy, Jesse, and Kelvin Gemstone.  

Strongman contests differ from bodybuilding in their emphasis on strength rather than definition, so bulk is fine.  Many strongmen find that a belly is an asset, as we see with Tom Stoltzman, World's Strongest Man in 2021 and 2022.

Bodybuilders are drawn from the elite class, who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on protein supplements and fancy gym equipment.  Strongmen are drawn from the working class, so their feats of strength often involve everyday objects: lifting boulders, logs, and tires; pulling or flipping over cars; tossing beer kegs.  Here Oleg Novikov, the World's Strongest Man in 2020, lifts a barbell made of tires.

Robert Oberst specialized in the log lift: in 2015 he broke the American log lift record of 211 kg -- 465 pounds.

Strength competitions are super-macho, drawing a lot of heterosexual alpha males.  Although Robert likes to hint that he is gay, he has never made a public statement. Besides, I think he might have a wife.

In fact only one professional strongman is out as gay: Rob Kearney, who coincidentally broke Robert Oberst's log-lift record in 2020.

Nude strongman bonus after the break